


reinventing the wheel

by myownremedy



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, F/M, First Time, Gen, M/M, Phobias
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-12-06 13:49:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myownremedy/pseuds/myownremedy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It took Leonard about a minute to fall in love with Jim, two and a half years to realize it, and four years for Jim to make a move.<br/>Highschool AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reinventing the wheel

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Pioneers" by Bloc Party.  
> For Lindsey.  
> Unbeta'd and written between the hours of 1 and 4 am so I am terribly sorry about the typos I know are there.  
> Also this is my first proper fic for this fandom so I apologize if the characterization is a bit rough.  
> Disclaimer: none of this is true, no copyright infringement intended, I don't own Star Trek.  
> edit (4-13-15): this is a transformative work. I make no money off of it. I do not own what inspired this work (Star Trek), but I do own this work itself and hold full copyright over it. Thank you.

_Freshmen Year._

Leonard McCoy meets Jim in the beginning, when he staggers into the auditorium for the _Welcome Back_ assembly and nearly falls into a boy’s lap. The other boy looks at him with confused blue eyes and Leonard manages to sit on the bleacher, next to the boy, and grips the edge of his seat with white knuckled hands.

“Are you ok?” The boy asks.

“Nope,” Len says, because it’s the truth, and maybe if the boy will shut up then Len can focus on his breathing or something.

“What –”

“Demophobia,” Len grumbles. “Fear of large crowds in enclosed spaces. Ok?”

“Oh,” says the kid and he falls silent for one brief second – Len can hear his heartbeat now, instead of the babbling of the students all around him – and then the blue-eyed kid is pressing a paper bag into his hands.

“Here,” says the kid. “My mom has panics attack. She always breathes into a bag.”

Len glances at him, picking up the bag, and sees an apple, a bag of chips and a sandwich laying in the kid’s lap. It looks like he upended his lunch bag.

*

It works – Len breathes in and out, again and again and again and he feels calmer, more attached to his body. The principal climbs to the podium, probably to make a speech, and the kid pokes his arm.

“I’m Jim.”

 _Cool_ , Len wants to say. “Leonard.” He says instead.

The principal motions for them to rise so they can sing the school song and Len sways. Jim grabs his arm.

“You good?” Jim asks, and Len shakes his head.

“I might throw up on you.”

*

Jim follows him to the dining hall after the assembly, talking idly about his plans and Len doesn’t really listen to him until they sit down at an empty table and Jim looks at him and says, “Leonard isn’t really a cool name.”

Len scowls at him.

“We should give you a nickname!” Jim taps his chin and Len just stares at him.

“Are we friends now or something?” Len asks between bites of his sandwhich.

Jim grins at him. “Absolutely.”

“Oh boy,” Len mutters, busy shrugging off his hoodie.

Jim goes quiet at the sight of his shirt.

“Is that a skeleton?”  
“Your powers of observation are truly overwhelming,” Len says.

“Why a skeleton?”

“I like bones. They’re pretty cool.”

“Bones.” Jim says, snapping his fingers. “That’s your nickname.”

“Right.”

*

Except the next day Jim calls him Bones, like he’s forgotten Len’s actual name, and he does the day after that too, and eventually Len resigns himself to the inevitable.

And it is inevitable, because Jim tries to give nicknames to everyone he meets, including Len’s neighbor, Hikaru Sulu. Jim plays against him in soccer once in PE and takes to calling Sulu ‘Kicker,’ a nickname Hikaru valiantly tries to ignore. The only two people Jim doesn’t have nicknames for are his weird friend-rival, Spock, (who has a bad hair cut and doesn’t smile), and a pretty dark haired girl that won’t give Jim the time of day, or her first name. She tells Len her _last_ name (Uhura), which Len passes onto to Jim, but no matter what Jim does, she won’t tell him her first name.

It’s not even in the yearbook!

(Len is, needless to say, very impressed.)

 

 _Sophomore Year_.

Leonard, in all of his sophomore wisdom, tries to give his little sister a pep talk before she leaves for her first day of middle school. He is full of the ennui that is signature to sophomores: high school sucks. It’s not like it is on TV: they don’t have time to decorate their lockers or even use them, all the hot girls date older guys and none of the teachers want to be here.

Unfortunately for sophomores, they still have two more years of high school to endure. Unfortunately for Joanna, middle school is even worse. Under no circumstances is she allowed to let anyone kiss her, to play this ‘seven minutes in heaven’ bullshit, or to smoke weed.

Joanna just stares at him after he finishes his speech and then asks him to change his shirt. Apparently button ups aren’t _cool_.

Len doesn’t really care what’s _cool_ but he obeys, shepherds Jo to the bus stop and watches her carefully from his seat in the back.

Hikaru Sulu is sitting across from him, listening to his iPod, but he takes out an earbud and grins at Len when he sees him.

“She’ll be fine,” he says. “Demora will look after her.”

Len scowls at him, torn between denying he’s worried and between bringing up the time Demora bit Jo on the shoulder. She was three, but still.

“Whatever.”

*

Jim gets on soon afterward, slides into the seat next to Len and leans his head on Len, eyelids fluttering.

“Good morning,” Len tells him, unsure how he feels about Jim practically cuddling with him. “You know it’s morning, right?”

“Ssh, Bones,” Jim tells him. “Don’t be a dick.”

“At least he didn’t miss the bus,” Hikaru chimes in from across the aisle.

“Quiet, Kicker,” Jim says blearily. “None of that.”

Jim curls up next to Len and falls asleep until the bus reaches the middle school. Len has his face pressed against the window, staring at Jo, who is looking around nervously.

He waves at her: she waves back, and then the bus is pulling out of the parking lot, and he feels Jim’s hand on his arm.

“She’ll be fine,” Jim tells him. “Don’t worry.”

Len doesn’t say anything. Jim knows that the only reason Jo is fine is because of Len, because after their father died Len looked after both her and his grief stricken mother.

Dead fathers are something they have in common.

(Halfway through freshmen year, someone made a comment about Jim’s father and Jim punched him, and Len had no choice but to join in, punching the guy until the teachers broke them up. When they were sitting in the nurse’s office, icing their split lips and broken noses respectively, Jim had told Len the entire story in halting, quiet sentences, trying to pretend it didn’t bother him and failing.  
An armed robber. A hold up gone wrong. Jim’s father had been the hero, the cop that got the bad guys, but it cost him his life, the very day Jim was born.

Len had tried to forget about it, because Jim hadn’t liked to talk about it, but when Jim didn’t come to school on his birthday, Len had used some of his lunch money to buy two ice cream bars and convinced his mom to drive him to Jim’s house.

They didn’t talk about it, they just ate the ice cream and played video games.)

So Len doesn’t say anything, just nods, and when they get off of the bus and stumble into 1st period – biology, to Jim’s horror – he takes the seat next to Jim and resigns himself to being Jim’s tutor.

*

“Sophomore year is the worst,” Hikaru announces at lunch, slumping in his seat and staring down at his pizza. “Biology, geometry and honors English? _And_ health?”

“I’m taking French _and_ Spanish,” Uhura tells him, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“But you’re good at languages,” Hikaru protests. “You _like_ them.”

“You’re good at school, Hikaru,” Spock tells him gravely. “You are on the honor roll.”

“Spock,” Hikaru says patiently. “I am complaining. Let me complain.”

Jim steals one of Len’s fries and leers at Uhura. “French _and_ Spanish? You must have a talented tongue.”

Uhura rolls her eyes and ignores him, and Len steps on Jim’s foot under the table, making Jim give him a wounded look.

*

“Have you heard about the exchange student?” Jim demands the next day between waking himself up and third period. “The crazy smart russian one?”

“Nope.” Len says, erasing part of his math answer.

“He’s from Russia and he’s a child prodigy and he’s been following Kicker around and giving him adoring looks.”

 _Oh boy_. “Just how old is this kid?”

“Thirteen.”

“Oh good, he’s thirteen,” Len sighs in disgust. “What kind of parent sends their kid across the world at _thirteen_?”

Jim shrugs.

Sure enough, there’s a skinny, pale kid with a thick accent sitting at their table at lunch. Hikaru is deep in conversation with him, obviously trying to explain something, and Uhura is watching with interest.

“He’s thirteen,” Len tells Jim when he catches Jim watching. “Censor yourself, for his sake.”

“I find I agree with Leonard,” Spock says, turning to stare at Jim. “Your jokes are not age appropriate for him.”

“Screw you,” Jim says, without any heat. “What’s his name, anyway?”

“Pavel Andrei Chekov,” Spock says, because Spock remembers _everyone’s_ name. “However, he has asked Hikaru to call him Pasha.”

“Aha!” Jim says, grinning, and Len rolls his eyes.

 

_Junior Year._

Len was wrong. Junior year is the worst. He has an ex girlfriend he doesn’t ever want to see again, so much homework he’s going to die, and Jim is too busy sleeping with this girl Gaila to text him back.

Also he’s taking physics.

He _hates_ physics.

Embarrassingly, Pavel has agreed to tutor him, and Len finds himself spending a lot of time with Pavel, Hikaru, and Spock, since they are good at science and also equally fed up with the fact Jim has become, to put it lightly, a slut.

Also Spock has never liked Joclyn and Len finds that refreshing, right about now.

“I hate school,” Len announces, rubbing his hands over his face. “I don’t need to know any of this.”  
“Don’t you want to become a surgeon?” Uhura asks. She’s leaning against Spock’s legs, reading a Russian book she bored from Pavel.

“Damnit, Uhura, I don’t need to know US history, or physics, or American Lit to be a surgeon! I need to know how to cut people open without killing them.”

She raises an eyebrow at him – just one, a move he swears to god she’s copied from Spock.

Hikaru is trying to hide his laughter.

“And I don’t need to know biology to become a pilot,” he says. “But here we are.”

“You want to become a pilot?” Pavel exclaims, surfacing from the physics problem he and Spock have been working on. “How did I not know that?”

“Yeah, how didn’t you?” Len asks. “He’s obsessed.”

Hikaru flips him off and Len goes back to study the civil war, frowning even harder when he comes across a mention of Georgia.

*

Then Jim breaks up with Gaila and he starts driving Len to school, having inherited his dad’s old car.

(The first time he drove it, his mom had a panic attack. Len was there and watched Jim produce a paper bag from the glove compartment. Jim later confided to him that Winona only started having panic attacks after his father’s death.)

It’s nice to have his best friend back. Len isn’t good at holding grudges, so after cussing Jim out for dropping him for a girl, he forgives him and they spend a good amount of time badmouthing Gaila and Jocelyn until Uhura overhears them and cusses them out in three different languages.

(Jim looked at Pavel reproachfully afterwards and asked why he taught Russian to Uhura.)

“Jim,” Len confides, “I don’t get physics and Pavel and Spock confuse me,” and so they spend a lot of time with their heads bent over Len’s homework.

That’s when Len realizes that his heart speeds up whenever Jim touches him, or whenever Jim smiles at him, or when Jim snuggles up to him when he falls asleep during a movie.

Len initially blames it on his anxiety, looks up the naked pictures Jocelyn sent him and spends a lot of time jerking off to them, but when he pops a boner from Jim sitting next to him in the auditorium, Jim’s thigh pressed against his, Len realizes that he’s a goddamn fool.

He spends even more time locked in his bedroom watching gay porn and alternatively jerking off or wincing, because some of it looks _painful._

*

Then Hikaru invites them to one of his fencing matches, and Jim watches him appreciatively for a while before turning to Len and saying, “Kicker’s kind of hot, isn’t he?”

Len is torn between scowling at Kirk and plugging his ears. Somehow he doesn’t think doing both will be very effective.

“You into boys now, Jim?” Len grumbles, shoving a fist full of popcorn into his mouth instead.

“I’m into people,” Jim grins at him and bumps Len’s shoulders with his. “Speaking of, it’s time for you to get back in the game. Date someone. Loosen up. Get laid.”

“Right,” Len grumbles. He wonders how to tell Jim who, exactly, he wants to date.

*

Spock knows, because Spock is at turns extremely oblivious and extremely observant, and he pulls Len aside one day, raises an eyebrow and asks if Len is going to pursue Jim.

“Damnit, man, you can’t just _ask_ that,” Len manages before falling into a seat.

“I apologize. I did not mean to make you anxious,” Spock replies, face neutral – an expression that Len has learned to read as concerned.

“I – I don’t think that would be a good idea. Jim and I.”

“I disagree.” Spock tells him. “You are what Jim needs. You are stable and responsible and dependable.”

“Thanks for making me sound like a middle aged woman,” Len mutters.

“He trusts you more than anyone else,” Spock continues, acting like Len hadn’t said anything, “and you don’t take his bullshit, a feature I admire.”

Len believes that, because Uhura doesn’t take Jim’s bullshit either and last week he caught Spock sticking his tongue down Uhura’s throat. In fact, he thinks ‘admire’ is an understatement.

“Think about it,” Spock advises, leaving Len scowling down at his desk.

 

Then Jim gets back together with Gaila, and Len decides to bury his feelings, finds himself envying Pavel. Hikaru knows about Pavel’s ridiculous crush, but the thing is, he reciprocates it. He’s just waiting until Pavel grows up a bit.

Pavel doesn’t know this, of course, and Len and Jim and Uhura have discussed kicking them both, but Hikaru is seventeen and Pavel is fifteen and that’s sketchy at best.

At least Pavel has a chance.

 

_Senior Year._

Len doesn’t know how he feels about senior year: he’s alternatively stressed about college apps and busy not giving a fuck.

Things are different, now that they’re old. Maybe it’s because Spock’s mom died over the summer, and they all attended the funeral, all sat with him while he sat with the body.

Uhura had explained the Jewish customs to the rest of them – Spock had been beyond speech, just then – and afterwards, Jim produced cheap beer and they got drunk.

(All except Pavel, who requires really good vodka to get drunk.)

Maybe it’s because Jim’s mother remarried, and he’s really, really upset about it.

Len spent the better part of the summer hovering over Jim to make sure he didn’t do anything self destructive, spent most evenings watching him pick up random women and leave with him while Len went home alone.

Maybe it’s because Joanna is going to a freshmen this year, and she’s still too cool for any of his lectures. Maybe it’s because Jocelyn has a new boyfriend and it looks a lot like love.

Maybe it’s because Len doesn’t know how to come out to his family.

He mentions it – this feeling of being old – and Jim kind of looks at him, and then sighs and asks why he’s noticing it now, when he’s been taking care of his mother and sister for years?

Len doesn’t know what to say to that.

 

Jim is shit at chemistry, which surprises Len enough that he laughs before agreeing to tutor Jim – of course – and they all agree to try and explain _Wuthering Heights_ to Spock, who just doesn’t get it.

(“If she loves Heathcliff, she should marry Heathcliff,” he says repeatedly, making Uhura roll her eyes.)

And then there’s Pavel, who doesn’t need tutoring with anything, and Hikaru, who is really busy being the newly elected Captain of the fencing team, much to Pavel’s glee.

Jim nudges Bones one day and nods at Pavel, who is talking to Hikaru excitedly. “That boy makes me feel old,” is all Jim says, and Bones wants to nod and also roll his eyes. He glowers instead.

*

College acceptance letters come for Spock, Jim, Len, and Uhura: Pavel is too young, and Hikaru is going to enlist in the airforce.

Len can’t quite hide his surprise when Jim announces that he’s going to go to where Len goes, and Spock raises an eyebrow pointedly at him.

Even Uhura takes him aside and offers to tell him her first name if he asks Jim out. Len refuses, because he doesn’t care about her first name, and he doesn’t like doing things that will only fail.

(“Len,” Uhura says gently. “He’s not going to say no.”

“I have class,” Len says and walks out.)

 

Then one day, when it’s twilight and they’re stretched out on the couch in Jim’s basement, watching a movie, everything goes slow and soft and Len looks up to see Jim watching him with soft blue eyes.

“Bones,” Jim says, and Len’s heart sort of leaps and stutters at the same time, and he opens his mouth and blinks, feeling stupid – and then Jim is kissing him.

He ends up punching Jim when Jim pulls away, ranting about “I’ve been waiting for you to do that for _two_ years, goddamnit,”and then kisses away Jim’s excuses, moves to straddle him, tugging off Jim’s shirt and greedily running his hands over Jim’s ribs.

“Bones,” Jim pants. “I’m sorry,”

“Shut up,” Bones snarls, moving to suck a hickey onto Jim’s neck.

“What if I apologize with a blowjob?” Jim offers, and Bones nods before biting down.

*

Somehow, they take it slow.

Sure, Jim blows him and Len gives Jim endless handjobs, but they’re cautious, unsure how to do this. Mostly they just make out, kisses turning from fierce and hungry to gentle and loving, and when Len’s chest starts to hurt he realizes what, exactly, this means.

He’s not ready to say it, but he thinks that he’s loved Jim even since he’s said _I might throw up on you_ and Jim had just squeezed his shoulder, and maybe Jim has loved him back, has loved him despite the fact Len doesn’t have a cool name and is shitty at physics.

It’s actually kind of unfair, how well they know each other, how all Jim has to say is _Bones_ in a low voice and Len is instantly hard, wants nothing more than to curl into Jim’s side with Jim’s hand on the back of his neck.

*

None of their friends are surprised: Spock even _smiles_ even he sees them walking hand in hand, and Pavel jumps up and down, and Uhura smiles big.

More importantly, Joanna isn’t surprised, tells him she’s been expecting this.

(Len doesn’t know how to take that.)

*

Len takes it upon himself to take Hikaru aside and remind him that Pavel is sixteen now, and that’s the age of consent, and could he please throw the kid a bone and put everyone out of their misery?

Jim accuses him of being smug when they catch Hikaru kissing Pavel tenderly, face cupped in his hands, and Len thinks about how Jim looks when he’s just finished sucking Len’s cock, big lipped and bright eyed and the _definition_ of smug, and elbows him.

 

*

Finals blur by and suddenly they’re throwing their mortarboards in the air and Uhura is jumping into Spock’s arms, and Jim turns to him and says, quiet, gentle, “Bones,” and Bones smiles, because he knows.

*

Later that night, Jim works slippery two fingers into him and Len gasps and writhes, and then Jim rolls on the condom and pushes into him, and everything is wet and hot and amazing, it’s electric, it’s the feeling of closeness that has Len clawing at Jim in an effort to bring him closer. Jim begins to thrust and Len locks his ankles around Jim’s waist and sucks a hickey onto Jim’s shoulder, and Jim moans _Bones_ when he comes.

“I love you,” Len says afterwards, when they’re half asleep and Jim is the little spoon.

Jim turns and smiles at him, eyes bright in the darkness.

“I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> I know most exchange students don't stay for all four years? But I needed Chekov to be around. Also in case anyone is unclear about his age, he's thirteen when he first arrives but turns fourteen quickly afterwards so by spring semester of the gang's senior year, Chekov is sixteen and a year below them.  
> visit me on [tumblr!](http://marnz.tumblr.com/) prompts welcome.


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